Muni knew about trolley lemons in '70s

Published 4:00 am, Monday, September 14, 1998

1998-09-14 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- No one can say San Francisco didn't get fair warning.

"The trolley coming our way has problems," a newspaper headline advised The City in 1978.

"As the first of 100 new Municipal Railway streetcars began arriving here, Boston's transit authority is returning 35 of the same space-age trolleys to the manufacturer because they just don't work," the newspaper noted three months later.

Earlier reports had put The City on notice that the first batch of streetcars made by aerospace giant Boeing Co. had given Boston a massive transit headache.

Boston put Boeing's streetcars on its rails in 1976 - two years before the first light rail vehicle arrived in San Francisco.

The streetcars earned high marks from riders for smoother, quieter, more comfortable rides with fewer screeches on curves, but rampant design flaws brought nothing but dismay to transit officials.

San Francisco's Muni system has experienced many of the same problems with its Boeings.

In recent weeks, breakdowns of the aging cars have been blamed for lengthy commuter delays. Problems with Muni's new $70 million Automated Train Control System, which was installed in late August, contributed to the delays.

Muni recently took 20 of its 77 Boeing cars out of service, leaving 57 Boeing light rail vehicles in its 136-car fleet.

The City is replacing the temperamental Boeings with light rail vehicles built by Breda, an Italian company that has been selling streetcars in the United States for almost 20 years.

"With each Breda we receive, we retire a Boeing," said Muni spokesman P.J. Johnston. "By 2000, we will have replaced all 136 streetcars in our fleet with Breda cars."

More than 20 years ago, when Boston first received the cars, it forced Boeing to make 70 to 80 modifications to each car - all at Boeing's expense - and the company later paid $40 million in damages to the city.

Transit officials said the streetcars just couldn't hold up under the daily wear of transporting thousands of commuters.

In 1978, Boston gave Boeing an ultimatum: We will not accept delivery of any more of your light rail vehicles until you correct their shortcomings.

The San Francisco PUC followed suit, telling Boeing that it would accept a production model of Boeing's streetcar for test purposes only - but would not accept any others until the design flaws were rectified.

"The PUC is gravely concerned that on the eve of commencement of delivery of the light rail vehicle to San Francisco so many design and hardware deviations from the specifications still exist," the commission's letter to Boeing said.

A 1978 newspaper editorial advised San Francisco to

"begin looking for alternatives."

But The City forged ahead after receiving Boeing's assurances that the problems would be solved.

When San Francisco got its first Boeing streetcar in February 1978, Mayor George Moscone took city officials on a celebratory 3.25-mile spin through the Market Street tunnel.

That day, the president of Boeing predicted that The City would "love" the new streetcars.

In 1979, when Boston refused to accept the last 40 cars it had ordered, San Francisco snapped up most of the rejects.

Muni began full service on its new fleet of Boeing light rail vehicles in February 1980.

In the years that followed, the Boeing streetcars would prove as temperamental in San Francisco as they were in Boston.

*In 1980, during a test before The City accepted the cars from Boeing, a car's brakes failed, and it rolled backward through the subway at 35 mph before crashing into another Metro car.

*In 1983, a Muni streetcar door malfunctioned, delaying the morning commute, making hundreds of people late for work and forcing some to transfer to buses.

*In 1984, Muni issued a nine-paragraph apology to the thousands of riders "inconvenienced" by a streetcar breakdown that had jammed up service for an hour during the evening commute.

*In 1988, Muni bragged that the reliability of its streetcars had improved dramatically since 1982, when they were breaking down every 600 miles. They now break down every 1,800 to 2,000 miles, Muni officials said. German-built cars in San Diego, by contrast, break down on average every 28,300 miles.

Ten years later, Public Transportation Commission President Rudy Nothenberg said: "The fact that (the Boeings are) still running at all is a tribute to the people who fix the things. . . . They are impossible to maintain and they have many, many design flaws."

The Boeing streetcar was the fruit of a 1972 push by the U.S. Department of Transportation to design a new standard in light rail transit - a vehicle that would replace trolleys designed in the 1930s.

Transit authorities across the country, including the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and Muni, helped write the specifications for the new streetcar.

The government, which footed the bill for 80 percent of the design and production costs, requested bids.

Five U.S. companies submitted bids to design and build 275 streetcars, which would become the first streetcars built in the United States since the 1950s.

In 1973, Boeing won the contract with the low bid of $63 million. General Electric Co. was the highest bidder at $99 million.

Boston and San Francisco agreed to buy the light rail vehicles for $333,000 apiece. Boston ordered 175 and San Francisco 100.

Although Boeing had no mass transit experience, the Seattle company said the market looked promising.

"In addition to the replacement market for over 1,500 streetcars operating in the United States, a number of cities are planning new light rail transit systems," Boeing said in a 1975 press release.

Boeing gave the plum assignment to Vertol, its helicopter division in Philadelphia.

He said the federal government had instituted a "Buy America" policy for federally funded railway projects around the same time the contract was awarded.

Phelps said, however, that the policy wasn't a factor in choosing Boeing, because four other U.S. companies also had submitted bids.

"At that point in time, there were still a fairly large number of U.S.-owned and based streetcar builders who were active," he said. "None of them are left. All of the companies serving the U.S. market are foreign-owned."

The federal government still has a "Buy America" policy, Phelps noted, but foreign companies qualify by purchasing the major subsystems - brake and propulsion systems - from American suppliers and doing final assembly in the United States.

Boston's Mulhern said the city originally agreed to keep the streetcars in service for 25 years - as required under the federally funded project.

Luckily, he said, the government let Boston off the hook.

"The Boeing cars were such lemons that the government relieved us of that obligation at year 15," Mulhern said.

"That was helpful. It allowed us to retire the known offenders - the worst performing vehicles."

Boston has thrown "millions of dollars" into the Boeing cars during the past 20 years to keep them running, Mulhern said. Among Boston's fleet of 175 streetcars, 55 are Boeings.

Boston and San Francisco are now pursuing the same strategy - phasing out the Boeings with new streetcars.

"We're doing everything we can as fast as we can to replace the Boeing vehicles," Mulhern said. &lt;

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